Day 5 of 14, Hay-onWye, Shrewsbury, Touring the UK

Thought it was time to bring back the map, it's helpful to see where we are and where we're heading on this 14 Tour of The UK.  

Todays Itinerary reads as follows:  travel through the Brecon Beacons National Park to Hay-on-Wye, a town famous for it's bookshops.  Continue to Shrewsbury, a picturesque town near the English/Welsh border.  Take a walking tour with the town crier to see black and white buildings that line the narrow streets.  Travel through Cheshire to your hotel in Chester.

Just outside the carpark is this cute map showing this historic little village of Hay-on-Way.  

You can see how narrow the roads are in this little village, with shops lining the street.  Lots of books shops, and charity shops.  Unlike the US where you can donate to a charity, The UK has lots of second hand shops where the proceeds are directed to a specific charity.  We noted the second hand clothes seemed more expensive than our resale shops back in the states.

On a hill overlooking the village is Hay Castle

At the base of the Castle is a monument with plaques honoring the towns dead in various wars.

Notice the book store across the street.  With the bright sunny day, it was hard to photograph the plaques to read the names of those being remembered.

On the stone wall is a plaque with the history of the castle.  You can see how old it is, how many times it's been destroyed and rebuilt.

As you climb the hill to enter the grounds of the castle you pass through this impressive very large and very thick door.  This 13th century gateway is the oldest working defensive door in situ in the UK.  It was restored in 2019 using locally sourced oak to replace some missing wood.  150 new nails were forged re-using medieval wrought iron!  Truly impressive.

This very tall man, is Martin, our town crier in Shrewsbury.  The woman to his right was taller than me.  I'm 5'5, she was probably about 5'8'.  Martin was well over 6 feet, closer to 7 ft.

The Black and Whites.  

Notice the curved wood in areas?  We were told you can tell if the building was built by a local carpenter by looking for curved vs straight boards.  The curved wood indicates the building was built in forest after trees were felled then disassembled and brought to town and reconstructed by a local carpenter vs buildings with straight wood where logs were cut elsewhere and brought to town to build.

An old clock tower.

Beautiful stained glass window.

When we had our group dinners, we got a bit of selection like this while on the coach to select our meal for the evening.  I'm the * and my friend has her choice underlined.  One of the negatives of this tour company CIE was that all group dinners were in the hotel.  I think most of us know hotels are generally known for having the best cuisine.  In other tours I've taken, you generally leave the hotel and go to a nice restaurant, in order to see and experience a little more of the culture of the area.  Between Jane and I, we've toured with 4 other companies.  So this is one of the reasons I would not recommend this tour company and won't be using them again.  

Our dining area with a view of the pretty outside gardens.  The Doubletree was a spa and convention area, so it was quite large.  We didn't have any time to even see, let alone use any of the spa facilities.

Our room for the next 2 nights.  

The last 3 photo's are from The Doubletree's website.  There was a large outside area that was quite pretty; but we didn't get to take advantage of it, partially due to our schedule and when we arrived it was raining.

**I hope this picture heavy post works out ok, I decided not to separate the day into part I and part II.

PLEASE leave me a comment when you come visit, so I know you were here. Your visits and comments are very special to me. AND remember, leave your name and url and not your profile link. Name and url takes me right to your blog post so I can reciprocate the visit.

Day 4 Continued, Cardiff Castle

This is a cut and paste of the itinerary:  Our Itinerary reads: Explore Bath, a city of elegant Georgian buildings in a distinctive golden stone.  Tour the wonderfully preserved Roman Baths.  Head to Cardiff, where you'll take a sightseeing tour of the city before touring Cardiff Castle, a medieval castle fabulously renovated in Victorian Gothic style.  Dine in your hotel this evening.  So, we are inside Cardiff Castle.

The ceilings were gorgeous.

One of the walls in the nursery.

Cardiff Castle is one of Wales leading heritage attractions.  From the Roman occupation, to the Norman Conquest, through Civil War, The Victorian transformation and the terrors of WWII, there are 2,000 years of history in the castle right in the heart of the city.

Picture after picture.  There's so much to see on every wall, on every ceiling you hardly can take it all in.

Murals and symbols throughout the castle.

Even the rooftop area was gorgeous.

The Bute family left their mark transforming the house into the opulent Victorian Gothic Home it is today.

After departing Cardiff Castle, we headed Mercure Hotel, were we lodged just for 1 night.

Once again we were super rushed to check in, get out luggage and change for dinner, so no time to take our own pictures of the hotel, so these are from the hotel's webpage.

In the morning we'll head north from Cardiff.

PLEASE leave me a comment when you come visit, so I know you were here. Your visits and comments are very special to me. AND remember, leave your name and url and not your profile link. Name and url takes me right to your blog post so I can reciprocate the visit.

Day 4 of Fourteen, Touring The UK,( Bath, Cardiff)

Moving Day, so bags out at 7, breakfast at 7 and be on the coach at 8.  We head northeast from Tavistock.

Our Itinerary reads: Explore Bath, a city of elegant Georgian buildings in a distinctive golden stone.  Tour the wonderfully preserved Roman Baths.  Head to Cardiff, where you'll take a sightseeing tour of the city before touring Cardiff Castle, a medieval castle fabulously renovated in Victorian Gothis style.  Dine in your hotel this evening.

Beautiful buildings like this everywhere with gorgeous flower boxes and or planters in front.  These two ladies (cousins), were part of our group.  Their luggage didn't make it to London, so they did lots of scrambling until their luggage was found and caught up with them.

The buildings were golden.

We noted beautiful walkways, as we took a walking tour in Bath.

Sally Lunn's, the oldest house in Bath, built 1482.  Sally lived there in 1680.  It's a Tea and Eating House.

We're about to enter the Roman Baths.  Gorgeous, look at the size and details of the structure.

You walk above the level of the baths and get a great view of the baths and some of the city.  You walk on the same level as the baths and stop at various listening stations to learn more by using your voice box as part of your entrance fee.

You continue walking below the level of the baths where lots of artifacts are stored.  Much has been excavated and studied.  They've even found mounds of money.  It's dark on this lower level so pictures are a bit of a challenge.  AND, it's rather crowded as people continue to listen and stop at various stations.  You could spend hours if you stopped at every station and listened to the entire recording.  We were a bit hemmed in by our time table to grab lunch if wanted and be back at the coach at the appointed time, so we cut this area a bit short and headed to the gift shop.

We headed to Cardiff, the capital of Wales for a walking tour of the city.  This is Aneurin Bevan 1897-1960.  He's Welsh, and was The Minister of Health.  He spearheaded the British National Health Service.  During World War II, a need to care for lots of injured and sick people had to be set up.  Thus this monument to him.

Making our way through the city to Cardiff Castle.  This is the walled area.

Inside the walled area, the beautiful clock tower in the distance.

The Keep way up on a hill.  A fortification built on top a Roman ruin.

Some of stone wall with the Dragon, the symbol of Wales.

Lots of history here, Romans, Normans, William The Conqueror, and even World War II are part of the history.  The tunnels under the castle were used as air raid shelters capable of housing 1800 people.  A system of ramps were used in order for people to get safely inside these thick walls when the air raid sirens went off.  It's fairly dark inside the tunnel, but you can benches, and bunkbeds.

A soup kitchen

The tunnel got lighter as we got closer to the end.  It was rather eerie in the tunnel.  You hear a siren and a radio announcement talking about the war, sometimes it gives details of a battle.  Gave me chills head to toe.  

There are 17 pictures here and we're not inside the castle yet; so I'll stop at this point here and do part II for the inside of the castle.  It's really something.

PLEASE leave me a comment when you come visit, so I know you were here. Your visits and comments are very special to me. AND remember, leave your name and url and not your profile link. Name and url takes me right to your blog post so I can reciprocate the visit.

Day 3, Part II, Touring the UK, St. Ives

Thought I would repost the picture of the map, so you can see where we are in our trip.  We're over nighting in Tavistock for 2 nights.   You can see St. Michael's Mount on the map that was part of the previous post for Day 3.

This was our Itinerary for Day 3: The plan for the day, be on the coach at 8 am, stop around 9:15 at the Jamica Inn, move onto Marazion for a picture stop of St. Michael's Mount, move onto St. Ives and have lunch; and be back at the hotel around 5.  Our tour director generally had this posted somewhere the evening before so we could plan a bit, but sometimes he didn't put it out until we were at breakfast, and sometimes he only had a copy on the bus...which wasn't as helpful.

So Day 3, Part II.  We proceeded from our photo op of St. Michael's Mount to the old fishing town of St. Ives, which isn't on the map, but is in Cornwall on the coast of The Celtic Sea.  Historically it was a seaport and fishing town.  It's turned into a hot spot for vacationers.  It boasts art galleries, good food, high-end accommodations, and is suppose to be the place to be.  

My friend, Jane and I were not impressed and felt it was overly crowded, dirty and really nothing specific to see.  I suppose if you were staying there and wanted to go boating, or fishing, or simply laying on the crowded beach in the sun; you might enjoy it.

We waited a long time to get a table for the standard fish n chips at one of the first restaurants we came to that didn't look as busy or crowded as others. 

The food was good, and we had a seat by the open area so could do lots of people watching and see the water.

Lunch took so long, we had very little time left so only window shopped as we made our way back to the car park to meet up with our fellow travelers.

On the uphill trek to the carpark we spotted this lovely Celtic Cross Memorial.

As you can see, it's to honor the men from St. Ives who fought in both World War I and World War II.

You get a feel for the narrow streets, and types of buildings in a rather hilly town as we were driving out of Cornwall making our way back to The Bedford Hotel in Tavistock.

This would be our 2nd night in this old castle looking old hotel.  We were pleased to see they had fixed the electrical problem and we had lights and were able to charge our phones.  The evening was our own, no group dinner this night.  We took some time to get things in order so that we could have our luggage out at 7 am the next morning before departing Tavistock.  We walked across the street to a courtyard area and had wood fired pizza and a glass of wine for dinner at Church Lane Pizza.  Once back in the hotel, we headed to the bar to order a nightcap to take to the room.  We ordered Manhattan's, but they didn't know how to make them.  However, the young gal was willing to make it per my directions.  It was quite tasty.

PLEASE leave me a comment when you come visit, so I know you were here. Your visits and comments are very special to me. AND remember, leave your name and url and not your profile link. Name and url takes me right to your blog post so I can reciprocate the visit.